


Mirror Mirror

by Misspelling



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Chaos, Childhood Friends, F/F, F/M, Gen, Infertility, M/M, Magic and Science, Magical Accidents, Magical Extinction, Peace, Pureblood Culture, Pureblood Politics, Pureblood Society, Time Travel, War, magical beasts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 14:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8405632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misspelling/pseuds/Misspelling
Summary: The death of magic as they know it inspires Hermione to greater levels of mad genius - desperation makes her rash, and Harry's never been able to resist an adventure. Even an adventure into the past to undo the mistakes of the previous generations.





	1. Prologue

"Harry, please just listen to me!" Hermione slapped her hand down on the arm of the flowery armchair, frustrated. "Yes, you're right about the ministry. They're idiots and always have been. But it was the right thing to do – it was, Harry, no matter how underhanded I had to be."

Harry sighed, rubbing his hands together to ease the ache. He isn't Dumbledore, to be rushing about everywhere at a hundred-twenty years old. Arthritis is a son of a muggle whore. "Hermione you went to the press. When, exactly, is that ever a good idea?" Harry summons his arthritis cream wordlessly, wandlessly. Hermione is too frustrated to take note, although she wouldn't have minded regardless. Anyone else would be wide-eyed and worshipful, as though he were never a weedy first year once too. 

"The public has a right to the truth! You know that –" 

Harry interrupts, becoming frustrated himself. "That's not the point, Hermione. You've caused a panic. It's one thing to prove there's a serious problem but another not to provide a solution." The cream settles into his hands with a sheen like an oil slick, sliding into his wrinkles and through his papery-thin skin to his bones. Next to them, Ron looks up from his biscuits. 

"You didn't go about this the right way, love." He says this gently, confidant that he's won the argument. As always Ron and Hermione had showed up for tea looking to Harry to arbitrate. He's convinced they'd have divorced without him there to be the judge, ready to settle matters one way or another so they could get on with the make-up sex. To be fair, Harry reminds himself that he did the same when Ginny was alive. Their kids took up their example – even their grandkids seem to be settling in with this sort of understanding. Harry smiles. There are worse legacies.  


"Minister Lufkin sent me a note before you ever showed up Hermione. Something about how they were just stalling for time while they came up with a solution." Harry sends her a chastising look. It's rare for Hermione to be so completely in the wrong about something.

Ron, looking habitually apologetic, interrupts his wife before she can say a word. "And please don't say something about how they headed you off at the pass with Harry. I confirmed it myself with Percy." Hermione makes a wordless, frustrated grunt. Harry levitates a fresh cup of tea into her reach. The problem is they know each other too well. None of them stand a chance against each other.

"Well, what sort of solution could they come up with? Muggle fertility drugs?" Harry says this only to prod Hermione into a better mood, and Ron knows it. They exchange an understanding look over Hermione's bowed head. She rolls her eyes either at them or what Harry has suggested.

"Of course not Harry, you know muggle drugs never work right on us." Hermione settles back into her chair, putting her feet up on the ottoman. A woman that old shouldn't pout, Harry thinks privately, the wrinkles just ruin the effect. "At this point no amount of fresh blood or fertility treatments can help. There's just too few of us. Hogwarts might be open for our great grandchildren, but after that there's just no way."

Ron sighs, already mourning Hogwarts. They'd rebuilt it from the foundations. It's almost more theirs than the founders now. "Too many wars too close together. Our parent's generation was decimated, our generation got a good knock, and the kids got caught up with that business in the East..."

'That business in the East' is Ron's preferred euphemism for the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by muggle terrorists in Azerbaijan, sweeping from the capitol all the way to Bengal and down to Egypt in a tide of mass murders for the least suspicion of magical ability. Harry himself had gone to put a stop to it and rescue as many witches and wizards as he could. The whole region just went mad with religious fervor. Ginny died there. Harry prefers not to think on it.

"If there's a problem there's a solution. I won't think otherwise." Hermione sniffs, determined. "Fertility magic is tricky business. More often than not they'd get a genetically identical clone out of the deal – which ages more quickly if they can even get it out of infancy. We only have so many years in our blood. Even the muggles have figured that much out."

"Well," Ron says reasonably, perfectly willing to be the sounding-board for his wife's genius, "If we can't magic our way out of this, we'll have to do it the hard way." Harry, thinking this is a sex joke, snorts into his tea. Trust Ron.

But Hermione has a dawning realization on her face, the sort of eureka moment that won her six Orders of Merlin and a Nobel Prize. "The hard way. Ron! That's it! That's exactly it!"

"What's it?" Harry and Ron exchange another look, partially confused and excited and partially exasperated. This is exactly what Hermione said before she came up with the spell to destroy atmospheric pollution. That had been an adventure – sneaking into foreign countries, absconding with muggle scientists, recruiting volunteers to cast the spell worldwide without ever divulging the details. Too much opportunity to reverse the spell and fill the world's atmosphere with something…poisonous.

"We go back – as far as we can. End the wars before they become an issue at all. Everybody lives, nobody dies, problem solved! There'll be plenty of people to make babies if they aren't all trying to kill each other."

"Hermione, no, you know –"

"Love that is the worst –"

Ron and Harry sigh, look to each other, and decide silently to let Ron go first. Husbands get priority over brothers. "Love, that is the worst idea you've ever had. First, you know messing about with time is a bad idea. Too much can go wrong. You said that yourself a dozen times when we were kids."

"And," Harry takes his turn, "You were the one who told me that no one can go so far back. You said it when Sirius died, remember? Twenty-four hours is the limit." 

Hermione abandons her tea to float serenely around her impressively frizzy hair, "Yes, you're right. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying that the connection between you and the dark lord is very deep, even now that he's dead. What if –" She scoots forward, taking his arm, "Harry, what if you could go back? Switch places? Or, I'm not sure, take his place?" Abruptly she stands, energized. "I need a library!" She sweeps out as quickly as a geriatric old witch can, leaning heavily on her cane and all but throwing the pot of Floo powder into the fireplace. She disappears in a roar of green flame, leaving behind a pile of ash.

Ron sighs. "She needs to figure out her priorities." He summons the plate of pastries with a twitch of his wand, settling in for a long visit. "Mm, strawberry frosting…" Next to him, Harry laughs. And people always thought he was the leader of their little group. 

Harry doesn't think about what it would mean if Hermione's idea pans out until long after Ron has left to extract his wife from her first love, the Hogwart's library. What if she's right? Harry would have to confront the uncomfortable truth again. He and Tom Riddle are very alike. Enough time from the Second Rise has passed that Harry can privately acknowledge that they even think along similar lines. 

Neither of them can allow a challenge to go unanswered. They simply see challenges differently. When confronted with poverty and disdainful relatives both Tom and Harry escaped to Hogwarts. But Tom doesn't have limits. He destroys what he can't control. Harry welcomes chaos. A result of their upbringing perhaps. Tom was rewarded when he destroyed his enemies. Harry was punished for that sort of thing. And that's leaving out their role-models. Harry had Dudley to outshine. Tom didn't have anyone to set an example, even a bad one.

Harry mulls it over for weeks. He thinks on it constantly, even when his children and grandchildren visit for his birthday. He thinks on it when Hugo and Lily-Luna's youngest girl announces her third pregnancy. Ron must be, too. They don't speak of it. But now and then they exchange the wordless communication which is developed over a lifetime of friendship, speaking without speaking. They could lose all this, if it works. 

None of them might ever be born. Their children might never be born. That far back, even their parents might never exist. But, Harry can't help thinking, they'll lose this anyway. Lily-Luna's newest grandchild will be a squib. They all know it. Less than half of the family has magic. It doesn't mean Harry and the others love them less. But it does mean that they all love different things. The secrets are becoming complex. Harry can already foresee a time when the family will need to split, just to protect the secret. It's heartbreaking now, and it hasn't even happened yet.

Still, nothing comes of it for months and months. Harry sets the idea aside in favor of aiding the ministry in calming the public down and publicly speaking against arranged marriages, especially with child-brides. The things people come up with…

Until, one morning, he is assaulted by three dozen owls. 

They balance on every windowsill in the house, cooing and barking and shitting all over the lawn. No sooner can he open one window to let in a group of two or three than they're all in his kitchen, dropping packages and stacks of paper all over his breakfast. Harry yells, wand extended, banishing the haughty nuisances to the oak tree outside – they go with affronted flaps, either banished by him or buffeting him about the head as they take wing through the window.

Afterword Harry is left with his kitchen covered in a half-foot of loose pages, scrolls, books and packages, owl feathers and pungent bird shit. He knows immediately who's responsible for all this. He wades through the mess, waving his wand with jerking, irritated moves to clear a path to the fireplace. His knees can't handle a Floo call these days, so he simply tosses some powder in. Once the flames abruptly turn green and reach all the way up to the chimney Harry taps his wand to his throat with a whispered sonorous charm.

"RON! GET YOUR MADWOMAN OF A WIFE OVER HERE! HERMIONE! THREE SECONDS BEFORE I BURN THE LOT OF IT!" Harry taps his wand against his throat again, backing up from the Floo. There's no greater motivation for Hermione that threatening to burn her notes. Sure enough, seconds later Hermione comes shuffling out of the Floo in her pajamas cane first, hair for once in a sensible braid. 

"Harry! That's no way to treat six months research!" 

"Well, maybe you should've thought of that before your research got dumped in my beans and shat on by the owl office!" Behind Hermione the Floo roars again, Ron slumps his way through with the distinctive droopy eyes he's had since childhood. 

"Alright, Harry?"

"No! Hermione if your library is out of room again expand it. You know the spells better than I do. Ron, the kettle's on in the kitchen. If you can find it." Ron makes a sleepy noise, content with the promise of tea. 

"Leave my library out of it! You need this information." Hermione takes Ron by the elbow and guides him towards the kitchen, entirely familiar with Harry's house. Harry follows behind, rolling his eyes. Trust Hermione.

In moments Hermione has the owl feathers and shit cleaned up, the packages neatly stacked into a pyramid which brushes the ceiling, and all the assorted scrolls and papers organized on the counters. Ron settles on his chair, sipping Harry's breakfast tea and slowly waking up.

"Well, this about the dark lord and the…that whatsit Hermione was on about?" He yawns, rubbing his eyes. "The fertility problem. Or the war problem. I forget what." 

It's Hermione's turn to roll her eyes. "Yes, Ron. The impending extinction of magic."

"Yeah, that's it."

Harry settles at the table with a new plate of breakfast while Hermione manages the tea. Much better. "What does unloading the post owls have to do with the end of magic?"

"I told you Harry, its research. I've figured it out. Or, well, I think I have." Hermione snatches a piece of his toast and unashamedly takes her time smearing butter over it. "It's possible. I mean, we can switch you with Tom Riddle. His soul. You spent your formative years with a bit of him in your head. But there's a catch."

Harry snorts into his breakfast. Ron groans. "Isn't there always?"

Hermione ignores them with the ease of extensive practice. "Well, I'm only bending the fundamental laws of our existence. Honestly!"

Harry is fundamentally opposed to discussing the end of the world before a hearty breakfast. Ron agrees, and so they set the topic aside in favor of eating. Afterword, Hermione explains.

"It's a switching spell, basically. Nothing anywhere states that ephemeral things, like souls, can't be switched. It's a matter of mass and energy. Usually switching something, a book for example," Hermione summons one of her texts and it lands on the breakfast table with a thump, "Is easiest with something of equal mass. I say mass, notice, not size. It's not the volume which matters." With a jab of her wand the book is replaced with one of Harry's knickknacks from the other room. They can hear the book toppling to the ground, too large for the shelf.

Hermione clears her throat, beginning to lecture. "Now, less energy is needed when the mass is similar. The greater the difference the greater the magical investment. Too little power and the spell fails entirely, or partially. It can get a little wonky." Harry has the sudden thought of a little boy in pre-war London, half him and half…something dark.

"But," Hermione reassures them quickly, "souls don't have mass. They exist as pure energy. When Luna and I tried switching bodies –"

Ron sits up, alarmed. "Oi! When was this? Why didn't I know about it?"

"Well, yesterday if you must know. It went –"

"And you didn't think to let us know?"

"It was fine Ron! It went fine. I took a walk down the lane in Luna's body, so did she in my body, our magic was unaffected and everything. It was fine." Hermione reaches out to pat Ron's hand. He settles, unsatisfied but resigned. Hermione's become rather more rash than even Harry in her later years.

"The point is, it works. It can be done." Hermione gives Harry a very direct look. "Harry, you can do this. It works."  
Harry is unconvinced, and it must show, because Hermione begins talking again, even faster. "Harry this is really the only solution we've got. The ministry is talking arranged marriages, registered pregnancies required by law. It's only a matter of time before that idea comes up again. People are rightly terrified."

Harry sighs, unable to refute any of this. "That still doesn't explain how the time travel will turn out, you know?" Ron settles his hand on Harry's shoulder, lending him support. Merlin, what will he do without the two of them? They've been through nearly five wars and a century together, they share grandchildren…how can he possibly have an adventure without them?

"Well," Hermione looks smug, that's never a good sign. "That's the easy part. We've been experimenting with time travel for years." She throws an exasperated look of her own at the two of them. "Really boys. You know what we get up to in the Department of Mysteries, don't give me that look. The only question was whether Harry could supplant Riddle's soul. He can. At this point," she waves her hand vaguely in the direction of the package pyramid, "It's just a matter of putting the time-turner together. It'll be a big one."

Ron squeezes his shoulder gently. Harry sighs. "Well…we'd best get started. We're not getting any younger."


	2. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry has a heart-to-heart with James Sirius, witnesses a paradox and then dismisses it, murders first a child and then himself, endures a priest, steals a vast fortune, and finally (thank Merlin) makes it to Diagon Alley.

"Dad! What in the bloody hell are you thinking!?" Two years later, on the tail end of a public protest in Diagon Alley, Harry meets with his sole remaining child for the last time. James Sirius is not pleased.

"It's Hermione's idea." Harry examines his boat of ice cream. Fortescue's successor never gets the ratio of vanilla to chocolate fudge perfectly. Across from him, behind a more sensibly sized bowl, James bristles indignantly. He's fresh off an adventure of his own in Istanbul. The region is still unsettled. "It really is, I'm not even joking."

James huffs at him. No respect these days. Probably shouldn't have left him in that whorehouse in Dublin for his seventeenth birthday. "Well of course it's her idea! She's a mad genius, it's just what she does. Never mind that. Explain to me –" James leans in, lowering his voice so the unsubtle reporters across the street can't overhear, "how this is going to help anything. It's effectively suicide!"

Harry takes his time stirring together his fudge and honey-glazed almond slivers before taking a bite. Really, why is he doing this? James isn't wrong. In fact, he's being more sensible than any of them. "I suppose…it can't hurt anything?" James settles back in his chair, exasperated beyond endurance. Dramatic child. "Well, it can't." Harry says firmly, defensive. "If it works, great. I can do a lot to improve the wizarding world. Just…not having Voldemort ever exist will do a lot for us. And if it doesn't…well, I've lived long enough."

"No you haven't!" James erupts, and across the street the reporters trip over themselves trying to come closer without being noticed. Harry absently casts the color-change charm on them. They don't notice, being too focused on Harry and James. But witches and wizards walking by laugh, leading to a scuffle as the reporters turn on each other.

"Yes, James, I have. I'm a hundred and twenty-three years old. Frankly I've been on borrowed time since I offed Voldemort." James settles down, focusing on his ice cream with a displeased look. Harry is well aware that James isn't conceding defeat, only biding his time. "And that's not all. We're dying out James. I'm the only one alive who can feasibly move so far back in time. There's no guarantee of anything, of course, but it is a chance. I've done more with less." Harry summons the Cloak, neatly folded and packed into brown paper for subtlety's sake. James watches it move across the table the same way Ron might watch an Acromantula liquefy his leg for later consumption.

"I don't want it, Dad. It's not right." The reality of Harry's impending death, either actual or figurative, sobers them both.

"I know. But it is tradition, and I imagine you'll get some use out of it in the field. Take the cloak James. It can only help you." For a time they sit quietly, eating ice cream. James makes no move to take the cloak. Harry is the one to break the silence. "James how much longer do you think I have?"

"Years. Decades." James says seriously, immediately.

Harry sighs. He's been doing that a lot, the last two years. "No, James. I'm at the end of things. Me, Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione are about done. No, listen. I'm not saying this just to change your mind. If Hermione hadn't had one of her epiphanies we'd be talking about my Will right now instead." James abruptly looks near to tears, and Harry realizes this is a conversation they should have had a long time ago. Harry has always been the touchstone in their family, seemingly immortal and always ready to take them to faraway places to do good things, be heroes. He casts a privacy spell – one Hermione invented, incidentally, which means James can cry in privacy if he needs to.

"Dad…"

"James. You're old enough to understand what I'm saying here." Harry leans forward, pushing aside the remnants of their ice-cream to take his son's hand. "I've got a year left, maybe a bit more. Everything is handled. With the Goblins I mean. The main accounts go to you, of course, but I've left a bit of a nest egg for the others. It'll split evenly."

James is crying now, quietly. "You're sure about this? I mean, really absolutely sure. You're gonna leave everybody behind to…to what? Save the world?"

"Well, firstly no. I'll be leaving you all regardless, that's just the nature of things. Everybody dies. And I'm going back to prevent the rise of the greatest terrorist Britain ever produced, avert as many wars as I can, and give magic a chance to flourish as it was meant to. But, and you must understand James, whether I survive or don't…it doesn't make a difference. One way or another, my time is done. I'll be with Mum, Albus and Lily Luna in a year or so anyway." Harry squeezes James's hands gently, holding on as his son comes to terms with his father's mortality.

This is only the first in a series of difficult goodbyes. Next Harry must go to his grandchildren, and great grandchildren, and the Weasleys and Longbottoms and Lovegoods…Every one of them deserves a proper goodbye, an explanation from him personally. Ron and Hermione will be with him for those. But James…Harry wanted to handle this goodbye alone. 

James will have his wife and children, and grandchildren too. Still, James had been his partner in the field for nearly three decades, and Harry knows him under intense circumstances well enough that he wants to head off any rash behavior early. James Sirius was the one who would pull him back, physically if needed, whenever his toes were nearly singed off from spellfire. Albus would be more likely to cry a river of tears and quietly spell him to his chair, if he were still alive. And Lily Luna…well, she didn't put up with anyone's nonsense. Especially his. 

Harry, Ron and Hermione convene roughly three weeks later in his backyard. The past two years have seen incredible progress on the giant time-turner which will deposit Harry over a century in the past, where he must travel to Wool's Orphanage and Switch his soul for Riddle's own. It is a tall, glass structure nearly as wide around as Hagrid. To prevent it from flipping accidentally, Ron has tied his belt through the topmost loop and attached it with a sticking charm to the oak tree where Harry once built a tree house for his children.

All that's left is the golden sand, each granule inscribed with runes beyond his understanding. Hermione, displaying the lovely sense of irony she developed after the business in the East, has frankly stolen all the time turners the ministry has. Even, and perhaps especially, the one which had a bird's egg trapped in it. They hadn't the time to inscribe their own, even if Hermione could shove nearly a hundred years' experience with runes into their thick skulls in two years. Instead she lines them up, using a delicate instrument to tap gently at the glass to empty the golden sand into Harry's orange and white patterned soup bowls. Ron and Harry take turns with the full bowls of sand, carefully pouring them into the bottom half of the Time Turner through a funnel, taking care not to spill even a single granule.

When it's done, goodbyes said and legal matters settled, Harry settles himself in front of the device, exhausted with the effort of carrying the bowls from the kitchen into the backyard. They really aren't getting any younger. With every bowl of sand the giant hourglass has become more obviously magical. Halfway full and it glows, vibrating on the spot. Ron's belt doesn't budge, but the tree does. Harry eyes the branch the belt is attached to apprehensively. That won't hold much longer.

Behind him the Floo flares, Ron and Hermione leaving. They couldn't handle watching, for all that the three of them were waiting for the end for the past five years or so. Whether Harry succeeds or doesn’t…this is the end, as far as the family is concerned. James, he knows, is still a little angry with him. There's a vigil at the Burrow, packed to the rafters with their combined families, where Ron and Hermione have gone to give the news. Harry could join them if he wanted. Ron and Hermione wouldn't think less of him. He won't. The trial of living in a failing body has been the greatest challenge Harry has yet faced, and he's ready to be out of it one way or another.

Harry sends the counter-charm onto the belt. Harry has just enough time to see the tree snapping backwards in reflex, leaves scattering, before the hourglass flips – 

And it begins growing smaller, thousands of leaves rising from the ground and reattaching themselves to branches, curling up, shrinking. Branches shrinking, winter after summer, winter after summer, again winter dozens of times over. The tree shrinks more and more – now the height of Harry himself, becoming smaller, a thin twig with only two leaves. Harry blinks.

He's sitting in the same place, geographically speaking. The giant Time-turner is hovering, emanating golden light, and vibrating with the effort of holding still in one place and time. Absently, Harry casts another sticking charm on the belt, onto the ground this time. He takes stock of his surroundings.

His house is gone. Entirely expected. He built it himself after Ginny was murdered, unable to live in Godric's Hollow without her. It's nighttime. The grass is up to his waist, untamed. It's a clear, windy night. In the distance he can hear the rustling of tree branches. Harry takes a breath and shoves himself up. 

He conjures a rock, walks until he is well clear of the time-turner, and banishes the rock in that direction. The force of it dislodges the weak sticking charm immediately, sending the time-turner rocking in its pedestal. In seconds it is gone, back to the moment Harry just left. Ron and Hermione will dismantle it. If they still exist. If anything still exists past this moment. 

In which case, Harry thinks cheerfully, the time-turner isn't an issue at all. It doesn't exist, or can't, if Hermione never existed to create it. Not his problem. What is his problem is Tom Riddle, the aspiring mass-murderer child psychopath even now sleeping in Wool's Orphanage. 

Harry dissapparates without a sound, spinning in place, landing without fanfare on the street in front of Wool's Orphanage. He wastes no time, shuffling forward as quickly as his arthritis allows. The gate opens with a squeal, closing behind him without his needing to turn back to it. Too loud. Dogs bark. It echoes through the moist night air, across the quiet neighborhood. The door opens, thankfully without noise, and closes with a gesture behind him. 

As a child Harry could sneak about Hogwarts after curfew, but his eyes have only deteriorated over time. Of necessity Harry pulls his wand and casts Lumos silently. It is a weak, gentle light only strong enough that he doesn't knock into the coatrack. Just what he needs, as he remembers the path to Tom Riddle's room even after all these years.

Harry slips through the orphanage like a specter, slipping into Riddle's room without incident. He cannot resist looking his greatest enemy in the face one last time. He is incredibly young. Even asleep he looks somehow displeased. This is perhaps the second hardest part of the whole plan, after saying goodbye to James. The murder of a child. Harry doesn't try to fool himself otherwise. Although Riddle's insanity seems almost inborn, he is still a child. 

But there's nothing for it. This child is a monster. Riddle will only deteriorate over time, learning how to put up a charming and beautiful front, slipping beneath the notice of most people as he metamorphoses into the greatest evil since Grindlewald. For all that he is a child, he is a storybook monster too.

Harry takes no risks. He taps his wand to Riddle's neck, which jerks to the side and snaps itself. Riddle is dead. There's no opportunity for cross-contamination of any sort. The soul has moved on. Just as a precaution, Harry casts a wide-area spell to detect undead. Good. Riddle's soul has moved on. For a coward as great as Voldemort, Harry wouldn't put it past him to remain as a ghost.

Harry heals Riddle's neck without issue, righting the broken bones and damaged esophagus without any apparent effort. There won't even bet a bruise come morning. As advanced magic will likely be beyond Harry while he is occupying Riddle's body he takes the opportunity to cast several notice-me-not wards over the door and window. The muggles won't bother with them, and Harry can have a safe haven free of prepubescent children or well-meaning but ultimately condescending adults. 

Harry peels back Riddle's eyelids, leaning over him to lock eyes as best he can. Legilimency allows for the meeting of minds, but Hermione's research indicates…yes! In moments Harry's awareness of his joints, the constant pain of living in a too-old body, leaves him. Next to follow is his sense of touch, then smell. Last of all is sight. There is one disorienting moment where he is looking down on Riddle's cherubic face and also looking up, at his own wrinkled forehead with the faded scar…

"Oof!" His air is knocked out by the weight of his former body landing unceremoniously on top of Riddle's. It's done. Any possibility of Voldemort ever existing is gone. All that's left to show for this feat of magic is the corpse of an incredibly old man, which he shoves off himself immediately. It is incredibly unnerving to be looking down from the bed onto the blank face of his true self. 

Harry wastes no time, raiding his old body for his wand, pushing past the strange deja'vu feeling to drag the corpse by the shoulders from the room. It's a slow process, but eventually Harry makes it to the stairs. From there, his Auror training kicks in. He arranges the body upright against the banister before pushing it down the stairs and booking it back to his room. Behind him the body knocks against each stair with an unpleasant, meaty smack. He makes it through his door just in time to hear from downstairs as it lands in the foyer. If it didn't wake anyone up, the kids will be getting an unpleasant surprise come morning.

Harry shuts the door. Within moments there is the sound of opening and slamming doors. Then screaming. An adult, thank goodness. Harry isn't too interested in mentally scarring a child.

Harry spends the night quietly acclimating to his new body, stretching and bending for the simple pleasure of moving without pain. His wand he hides up his sleeve. All through the night the adults are up and moving about downstairs. At some point in the early morning hours one of them goes running down the street and comes back with the police. Harry watches from his window as they search the grounds for anything, examining both the front gate and front door. They won't find anything. 

There's a whole retinue of people who arrive by the end of it, transporting his old body on a covered stretcher on the backs of two men in overalls. The body has bled through the sheet. Harry turns away after that, settling under the thin blanket to catch a few uneasy hours of sleep.

The next morning Harry is feeling more himself. His old body is gone, and Riddle's body is similar enough to his as a child that the adjustment period is short and relatively uneventful. Before leaving the room Harry spies out the window and finds that all of the police have gone. It looks perfectly normal.

That's why he's so surprised when, after moving with the crowd of children towards breakfast, Mrs. Cole's claw-like hand clamps down on his shoulder without warning.

"Mr. Riddle. Come with me." She gives him no opportunity to object or escape, directing him before her by pressing on his shoulder. She leads him downstairs, past an area cordoned off and being mopped by a scowling muggle janitor who reminds Harry unerringly of Filch the squib janitor of Hogwarts.

Mrs. Cole pushes him relentlessly forward, toward an office presumably belonging to her. Behind him the door is shut and locked without explanation. Harry looks around the room, unsurprised to find it unchanged from the memories Dumbledore shared with him in his sixth year. It is rigorously clean and neat, but worn. The same could be said of the whole orphanage actually. Harry is reminded of his aunt, suddenly recollecting the pinched look on her face whenever she noticed his existence. Mrs. Cole has the same exact look, except her nose is running and her eyes are red and teary. Seeing his body must have been an awful shock to her.

Harry is directed to take the only free chair left across from her desk. The other is filled with a middle-aged muggle man wearing a priest's collar. He sits quietly, observing the man as he is observed in turn. The only one making any noise is Mrs. Cole, who is sorting through a file on her desk.

"So, Riddle." Mrs. Cole blows her nose on a worn handkerchief, the loopy C on the corner almost worn away. "You may have heard we had a visitor last night." She looks at him expectantly, and Harry senses that he's meant to say something.

"Ah, no? Is that what all the noise was last night?" Harry says this unconvincingly, withholding a wince. That was his body thrown down the stairs. He murdered a child less than a day ago. He is not alright with this at all.

Next to him, the priest speaks up. His voice is smooth, Harry notices, almost without any inflection at all. "Yes, the noise. That would have been the sound of someone pushing a man down the stairs, or perhaps the police when they came to investigate." What little of the man's mood Harry can discern from his expression is boredom, or maybe distaste. "We've – that is to say, Mrs. Cole has agreed to provide counseling to any children disturbed by this incident while they are questioned. That is why I am here. The lack of any evidence has convinced the police that the man was let in." 

Mrs. Cole drops her handkerchief into the bin, immediately pulling another one from her pocket and sniffing delicately. "We need to know who let him in, Riddle. It would have to be one of the older children. You're the oldest of the lot, so we're beginning with you."

"Did you let him in, Mr. Riddle? Understand that you're not in any trouble if you did. We'd just like to know what happened last night." The priest doesn't sound in any way sympathetic or approachable. Harry suspects that the other children will be as charmed with him as Harry himself is – that is to say, not at all.

"No. I did hear some noise last night, it woke me up some. But I just went back to sleep. Didn't think anything of it." Harry says this as evenly as he can, widening his eyes and adopting a somewhat shell-shocked expression. Mrs. Cole holds her new handkerchief to her nose with one hand, scratching out his statement with another. Next to him the priest is silent and unmoving. Harry is getting the distinct feeling that his lies were obvious.

"Well," Mrs. Cole says briskly, "That's all there is to it. Keep this to yourself Riddle, until we've had a chance to speak with the other children. Go on to breakfast." She rounds the desk after him, presumably off to fetch another child.  
Harry stands and leaves as quickly as he can without seeming too eager. That priest, whatever his name, is sincerely creepy. Like all the care went right out of him. Mrs. Cole leaves him in the doorway, clacking away down the hall at a quick pace. Her sniffles can be heard even after she turns the corner. Harry looks back and sees the priest has pulled out a book, presumably a bible, and is reading it intently. Harry hurries away without comment. 

He arrives on the tail end of breakfast, which is porridge, and eats quickly. After that he settles into the rhythm of the orphanage. He's left alone. Riddle's unfortunate reputation for bullying means he is mostly left alone, although some of the boys taunt him under their breath. It is literal child's play to ignore them. Harry's come a long way from the weedy little hothead he used to be.

He notices the priest on a few other occasions throughout the next week, always in the company of Mrs. Cole and always with the blank look on his face. Although Harry doesn't say anything, word of the body on the stairs spreads rapidly through the orphanage. The children are by turns frightened and excited, daring each other to walk over the spot where the body must have landed. Harry's pretty creeped out himself.

By the end of the week things have calmed down considerably, although every Sunday Harry and the other orphans are trotted out to the church where the priest delivers a monotone speech on sin and wickedness. Harry pays no attention. He wouldn't have even if he hadn't spent three and a half years putting an end to the witch hunts in the East. Hellfire and damnation may exist, but Harry's got enough to be getting on with.

He hasn't in any way forgotten his true purpose in being here. Infertility is still a serious issue, although it is decades too soon for the wizarding world to be aware of it. Staying here, enduring years as a tenant in the orphanage…it smacks too closely to the Dursleys. He won't do it. Moreover, he can't do anything to advance his plans from the orphanage. He must escape.

The problem is Riddle's body. It's eight years old, and short for it. He looks closer to six. And he could leverage that to be adopted, but sod that. His parents may be dead, but they're still his parents. He's not about to replace them. He has the ultimate advantage of magic, and he intends to use it. 

Harry cannot get anywhere without money. And make no mistake, no one in the orphanage has any. His first order of business is to simply leave the grounds with a load of tins beneath his arm. So long as he's back before nightfall, Mrs. Cole won't call the police on any of the older boys. Girls are restricted to the sewing room. Sexist? Yes. Harry's problem? No.

A simple compulsion on the tins makes the muggles both ignore them and drop their spare change into them. One particularly weak-willed muggle woman simply upends her purse over a tin outside a restaurant. Harry feels absolutely no guilt over this. He's already murdered a child, there's not much worse he could do. Stealing? Bah! 

The only precaution Harry takes is to ward against magical persons. Risk of discovery aside, there aren't any actual laws about a wizard stealing from muggles. Really, so long as this goes unnoticed, Harry could amass a fortune in muggle pounds. In fact, that is exactly his plan. Enough money to keep him fed, clothed, and apparently well looked after. The last thing Harry wants is to be picked up by the authorities, muggle or magical, and looked after by someone. Harry is a hundred and twenty-three years old, thank you very much. He does not need looking after.

Within weeks Harry's tins have amassed so much money that it can't all fit into his worn backpack and he must wrap it all up in his sheet and shrink it to fit. All counted up, Harry has nearly four hundred and thirty pounds. For perspective, because he senses this is astronomical, Harry walks along a new neighborhood looking at 'For Sale' signs. One house, with three bedrooms and a yard, is selling for three hundred and fifty pounds. A house is selling, not renting, in muggle London for less than one month's rent of a one-bedroom flat in his own time. Less than half, actually. 

Harry reminds himself that this is Prewar Britain. Between rationing, hyperinflation and returning soldiers the prices are going to go way, way up. In a few years this house won't be for sale, but renting instead. And then, of course, the bombings. It's entirely possible this nice new neighborhood will be gone fairly soon. For the first time Harry feels a smidge of guilt over his ill-gotten fortune. The muggles are really going to need their money. 

"Well, so do I," Harry reminds himself quietly. 

Magic is going extinct, even now that Voldemort's rise (and second rise) cannot happen. There are countless magical people who have been misled by Grindlewald, slowly moving to put him in power. This is to a good cause.

He leaves the orphanage without fanfare on the first of the year, his pack light on his shoulders thanks to a periodically reapplied featherlight charm. In it is all his muggle pounds, a loaf of bread and a few apples. It's enough to get him to Diagon Alley, although he spends two horridly cold nights in the alleys, casting notice-me-not charms whenever a vagrant becomes too interested in him. It's no place for a child.

Harry stops looking over his shoulder for police the moment his feet cross the threshold into the Leaky Cauldron, the poorly-hidden pub which is a front for the better-hidden entrance to Diagon Alley. The witch behind the bar is about as old as Harry was before this adventure started. Harry sidles up to the bar and turns his most innocent look on her. Immediately the folds and wrinkles of her face arrange themselves into a smile.

"Well, now, who's this? Seems like I know everyone to visit the Leaky but you, lad." The crone's yellowed fingers are bedecked with nearly a dozen simple silver rings. They flash in the lantern light as she scrubs the bar idly.

"I'm Tom, ma'am. Would you mind opening the entrance? My parents are waiting for me on the other side." Harry could go open it up himself, but a child in possession of a wand before eleven? Illegal, and that would be noticed. There are dozens of people in the pub who could testify. And he's a runaway. Just too much attention overall.

"Of course Tom, just this way." The witch makes her way slowly to the back door, and Harry maintains his patience. Merlin, was he this slow? His poor great-grandchildren must have been so impatient with him. Harry is led unerringly to the brick wall, and the crone taps three up and two across and turns to him. 

"Here you are Tom. If you need any help getting through just go in there," She pointed to a bookshop nearby. "My grandson Barnaby runs that store, he'll let you back through." The crone turns to make her creaking way back to the bar, and Harry abruptly realizes that he never got her name. It's too late, now that the wall's closed up. Pity, he was always curious about who old Tom, the proprietor from his childhood, might have inherited the Leaky from. It's an old institution.

The day's getting late and Harry has no magical money with which to acquire lodgings, so his first stop is obvious. As he makes his way through the Alley towards the tall, marble bank at the end Harry can't help but notice the prices. A good post owl, nothing exotic, cost nearly ten galleons in his time. Here and now it is only seven Sickles and five Knuts. He's somewhat amazed. A newspaper is two Knuts, a standard students cauldron three Sickles and twelve Knuts, a cone from Fortescue's predecessor is once Sickle per scoop - an ad for an experienced seamstress offers a salary of twelve Galleons a year. A Galleon a month! Minimum wage was four a month in Harry's time.

Harry makes it to Gringotts bank, walking past the goblins at the door without hesitation. Hesitation is for thieves, he's learned, and he wouldn't put it past goblin magic to detect something off about him. Even odds as to whether they'd care to do anything about it, of course, but Harry would rather avoid all attention.

He waits in line and dumps his sheet full of muggle coinage onto Brightclaw's otherwise immaculate desk, earning a toothy grin from the goblin. Harry's not sure whether that's a good sign or not. Goblin teeth are very sharp, almost needle-like. Nevertheless his business is concluded quickly, and Harry takes his much reduced pile of gold and silver back into his pack. Altogether 91 Galleons, 10 Sickles and 4 Knuts. In his time Harry would consider that walking around money. Right now it's a small fortune, nearly enough to retire on. If you're thrifty, that is, which Harry intends to be.

Harry heads back through to the Leaky after visiting Barnabas, an incredibly obese wizard who walks sideways through his doorway to reach the brick wall. Incredibly ugly, of course, but quite friendly for all that. Very like his mother, who is delighted to see Harry again.

"Good evenin', Tom. What're you doing back in here?"

Harry sighs, put upon. "The house's got Doxies, ma'am. Mum says to stay here a few days. She gave me enough money for some food, too."

Harry infers that the crone has an interested look on her face. Her forehead wrinkles have lifted on one side, as though she were lifting an eyebrow somewhere beneath them. "Oh? Well, don't you worry lad. Got a nice room for you, number seven. Usually have dinner 'round about this time. Get you some?"

Harry nods silently, taking a seat at the bar and putting his pack on the ground beneath his feet. He makes sure to wrap the strap around his ankle, so he'll know anyone trying to summon it. The crone delivers his dinner of shepherd's pie and a tall Butterbeer with his key, a heavy brass with the number '7' pressed into the top. Harry pays three Sickles and eight Knuts for the use of the room and enough meals to see him through to the next week, and the crone wishes him a good night before he trudges upstairs. 

His feet are absolutely killing him after two days of walking to get here. He locks the door behind him and spares just enough energy to ward the room against thieves before he falls face first onto the rickety bed. He's asleep before he can get his shoes off.


End file.
